Mother helping parents cope with kids’ drug abuse

She was the first in line to volunteer in their classrooms, she planned snacks as a team mom and spent the majority of her days caring for their needs as a homemaker in Southwest County for more than two decades.

That’s why the addiction that threatened the life she hoped for her family proved to be so paralyzing two years ago. Today, Salzbrunn is the founder of Temecula’s Parent Support Group, where she helps parents grappling with the very question she asked upon realizing one of her children had a substance abuse problem:

“What did I do wrong?”

“There were many days where I felt everything I tried to do as a mom had failed,” Salzbrunn said as she fought back tears in her new office in Temecula. “That’s tough to wrap your brain around, and that’s the common thread between myself and all the other moms who sit in these groups. You give birth to these children, you give them everything, and to think it’s going to end up like this -- they are doing drugs and they could potentially lose their lives to these drugs -- it’s not easy.”

These parents, however, are not alone, Salzbrunn insists.

PARENT SUPPORT GROUP

What: A counselor-facilitated support group for the parent whose child struggles with the substance abuse or dependency.

When: 6 p.m. Thursdays

Where: 43397 Business Park Drive, Suite D7, in Temecula

Phone: (951) 218-7198

Email: theparentsupport@aol.com

That’s where she, her husband, John, and counselor Felicia Durling step in with weekly meetings aimed at supporting parents as they piece their lives back together in the wake of addictions threatening to tear families apart. In fact, when Salzbrunn learned of the campus drug stings that led to the arrest of more than 20 Temecula-area high school kids in December, the 50-year-old homemaker-turned-community beacon immediately turned her thoughts to parents suddenly thrust into a world of juvenile court proceedings and rehab clinics.

Many of those parents, Salzbrunn said, likely heard for the first time that their high-school-aged children had become entangled with marijuana, cocaine, LSD, ecstasy and heroin. Some people who attend the group are parents of middle school have children with substance abuse issues, she said.

“This group is something that I’ve wanted to do because we’ve walked through it,” Salzbrunn said. “We had a child who got into trouble with drugs, and we found that when we were searching for help, we as parents couldn’t find any.

“That’s the vision we have: To be a resource for parents who are filled with confusion and fear and all the things that come with the reality that your kid is using drugs. It’s a very scary place to be.”

Two years later, Salzbrunn said, she and her family are well on the road to recovery, largely the result of innovative thinking that she learned while working with Durling and the skill sets she shares in the weekly group, in one-on-one counseling and in the group’s workshops.

Plenty of parents know about tough love. Dealing in absolutes, however, doesn’t work with addicts, Durling said.

“One of the things we talk about is how to get your kids’ hearts while still having boundaries at home,” said Durling, who has worked in the field for more than 15 years. “I really want parents to know it’s not that old-school, tough love. We give parents permission to still love their kids and support their kids while still incorporating boundaries.”

That means reframing ultimatums to say that a child choosing drugs is choosing not to live with their parents. It’s about having parents tell their children that their hearts are breaking over their children’s choices instead of singling out their shortcomings, Durling said, and it’s made a world of difference to John Salzbrunn, a 54-year-old retiree who is supporting his wife’s new calling.

“When you first find out, your mind is trying to fix it 24-7,” John Salzbrunn said. “One of the first tools we learned was to break that cycle. The heart of this group is for parents to get their lives back even though they are going through this.”

One mother, a Temecula business owner who asked not to share her name, agreed. She met Durling and the Salzbrunns two years ago after learning her college-aged daughter had become a heroin addict, and she said she was too ashamed to discuss her plight with her family.

“I walked in completely broken and they held me through it and gave me hope,” she said. “Over the course of time, I learned the tools I needed in order to live a life separate of my daughter’s addiction while learning how to deal with her addiction.

“And as I started to change, she started to change.”

Likewise, the changes in Andrea Salzbrunn’s life are so profound -- drugs are no longer an active issue with her child, who is now a young adult -- that she’s well on her way to becoming a counselor to work alongside Durling in their new office on Business Park Drive. The group may be especially appealing because mothers and fathers who walk through their doors have a peer in Salzbrunn.

“They are just drawn to her story,” Durling said. “We’ll have a room full of parents and they are all around her because she knows the pain that they are in.”

Said Salzbrunn: “The first thing we all want to know is where did we go wrong, where did we flop? These parents come in and they are filled with guilt and they are filled with shame and embarrassment and confusion.

“They really don’t know what direction to go in, and that’s the gap we want to stand in.”